Idol Anxiety

Front Cover
Josh Ellenbogen, Aaron Tugendhaft
Stanford University Press, Jul 18, 2011 - Religion - 256 pages

This interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses idolatry, a contested issue that has given rise to both religious accusations and heated scholarly disputes. Idol Anxiety brings together insightful new statements from scholars in religious studies, art history, philosophy, and musicology to show that idolatry is a concept that can be helpful in articulating the ways in which human beings interact with and conceive of the things around them. It includes both case studies that provide examples of how the concept of idolatry can be used to study material objects and more theoretical interventions. Among the book's highlights are a foundational treatment of the second commandment by Jan Assmann; an essay by W.J.T. Mitchell on Nicolas Poussin that will be a model for future discussions of art objects; a groundbreaking consideration of the Islamic ban on images by Mika Natif; and a lucid description by Jean-Luc Marion of his cutting-edge phenomenology of the visible.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Whats Wrong with Images?
19
The Christian Critique of Idolatry
32
The Painters Breath and Concepts of Idol Anxiety in Islamic Art
41
Idolatry Nietzsche Blake and Poussin
56
Dreadful Beauty and the Undoing of Adulation in the Work of Kara Walker and Michael Ray Charles
74
Iconoclasm and Real Space
97
How Many Ways Can You Idolize a Song?
117
Iconoclasm and the Sublime Two Implicit Religious Discourses in Art History
133
What We See and What Appears
152
On Heidegger the Idol and the Work of the Work of Art
169
Beyond Instrumentalism and Voluntarism Idol Anxiety and the Awakening of a Philosophical Mood
184
Notes
203
Index
235
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About the author (2011)

Josh Ellenbogen is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at University of Pittsburgh. Aaron Tugendhaft teaches philosophy and history of religions at the Gallatin School, New York University. He was guest curator of the 2008 exhibition Idol Anxiety at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

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